


Like Toy Soldiers

by akisawana



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, reverse big bang 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 00:17:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12782760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akisawana/pseuds/akisawana
Summary: Wash, and Carolina, and things going a little differently.





	Like Toy Soldiers

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2017 Red vs Blue Reverse Big Bang. Art by the lovely [echiknoi](https://echiknoi.tumblr.com/).

It was an ancient rule, as old as war itself, spoken of in poems written three thousand years before Carolina was born. The recruits weren’t real until they’d survived their first battle, or first blooding, or first ninety days, or first year. Until they’d seen enough weapons pointed at them to know what to do, until they’d proven themselves lucky enough to live. Too many died too young, and they’d take a piece of every soldier in the squad, if they were allowed. They had to be made to earn it, less from callousness than from simple self-preservation. Or group preservation as the case may be. Doubly so in Project Freelancer, where as many died because they weren’t skilled enough -or lucky enough- to master the equipment at the heart of the project.

Agent Washington earned it, like all the agents before, or at least all the ones Carolina cared about. He was not the fastest to become real, nor the slowest, he wasn’t the first and at the time nobody had realized he would be the last. He fit into the team like a bullet in a magazine, jack of all trades and master of none, but they had enough heavies who always sounded like an elephant in a china shop and lockpicks who had graduated from the Imperial Stormtrooper Academy of Marksmanship.

(Though York was pretty handy at hand to hand combat, in a bar-fight kind of way. So was North Dakota. South Dakota was technically infiltration, but she was just as quick to use her fists as her wits. Come to think of it, everyone involved in Project Freelancer could easily have worked at a bouncer at the roughest bars. That probably said more about the Project’s leadership than the agents themselves.)

Washington came off the battlefield sweaty and smelling of black powder and kevlar, on his own two feet, wide-eyed and a little babbly. Did it matter which battlefield? He came off more than one like that. He came home like that every time, until the day he came home over Maine’s shoulder in a fireman’s carry, no blood in his face but plenty on it and his right arm dangling nervelessly, South teasing him mercilessly to keep him oriented. Carolina saw them, checked them off -nobody was getting between Maine and extraction, South would likely rip out the spine of anyone who tried on general principle, and Carolina had to go make sure Wyoming didn’t get turned into an obnoxious grease spot, for reasons she never could quite figure out. If she had her way, she would have kicked Wyoming down to Beta squad half a hundred times, but it was decided they would rather dedicate resources in the field to watching his back than train someone else to use his equipment. Sometimes Carolina wondered if that was her fault, if she made it seem too easy. If they had asked too much of Washington when they told him to keep Wyoming alive in the firebox. She could have kept the great white idiot alive, she _did_. But that didn’t make Washington a failure.

It was easier for him to be Wash after that, to be the rookie that needed to be grabbed in vacuum, to be the one who complained about bouncing guns and believed what Delta told him about eating in his helmet. The one with a rubber duck and cat pictures in his locker, the one who skateboarded when he thought nobody was looking in little-used hallways. The one who got caught passing notes in class, who didn’t drink coffee but sucked down cola like he bled high fructose corn syrup. The one whose attempt at small talk somebody once jumped out of a pelican without a parachute to escape. Wash was a distant moon, always there even if he waxed and waned. A little silly off the field and by far the most professional on it. Carolina looked out for him no more than any other member of the team, she swore, but.

Wash stayed close enough to save.

She always thought of him, when she thought of him in later days, on Longshore. Sticking close enough to York to watch his left side, taking York’s vitriol easy in what she thought was confidence. Theta skating by on the board copied from Wash, his purple flickering over Wash’s helmet briefly. Delta winking green close to Wash, telling him some new bit of ridiculousness. Sigma’s light briefly turning his helmet bloody. York teasing him and Maine coming when Wash hit the button. He was the rookie and he was a damn sight more useful than the rest of the team and she left the docks in his capable stratagems. She could always depend on Wash, when she was in charge, to do whatever was necessary.

And she hadn’t worried about him because Wash was always okay.

They came home silently. Wash had kept everyone alive and unharmed, and she trusted him more after that. She trusted him to take care of himself and to look out for everyone else. Whatever the leaderboard said, he was better at that than anyone else save her, knowing who was best at what and where the most effective place to deploy Maine’s pod would be. He did so well, with nobody looking over his shoulder, and she didn’t think anyone noticed. And if he was a little quieter in those days, well. Everything was falling apart.

She took his AI, and they gave him Epsilon, and he was strong enough to take the fragment sharp as a shard of glass. Eta and Iota would never have suffered separation anyways, would have withered and died. And Wash could have stood that, as easily as he dug his heels in and refused to let Epsilon drag him down as the shard spiraled into insanity. But Carolina had _earned_ an AI, and it was better this way. Eta and Iota couldn’t be separated. Not even Sigma was that cruel. Epsilon imploding in Wash’s head, bad as it was, was still better than letting him think he wasn’t good enough to take care of one who wanted to live.

And she hadn’t thought about Wash after that until he pointed a gun at her head and told her to leave her team alone. And she hadn’t thought about him much after that, either. So much to do, and Wash was her pole star, fixed and unmoving, and she set her course by it even as she turned away.

And then, Chorus and hearing his message, hearing his name, hearing the desperate crack of his voice as he begged for help. Not the full break, familiar and half-joking. The hairline fracture of fear, and she tried to come back to him, to all of them, because if he couldn’t keep them safe, no way in fucking hell the others could take care of him. She wouldn’t have been surprised to find that Caboose had built a death robot that killed them all. Except Wash, because Wash was like some sort of radioactive cockroach, or so they said, surviving Agent Texas (a different one, she was told) and the Meta (who was somehow different than Maine, in a way she was glad she never saw), surviving the savoir of an entire race (or so Tucker claimed to be) and Red team (who were so incompetent they circled back around to dangerous). Wash would survive anything, and as long as he was alive, there was hope.

Chorus had still been scary in a way nothing else had been, moreso after she found them again. Wash in charcoal grey armor once more and Locus stalking him, Wash’s face serious and Wash not sleeping. Wash taking off his helmet as a decoy and Wash going over a cliff. Wash closer to Agent than she had seen him in not nearly long enough, and the icy realization of just how unhealthy it was. Wash forgetting how normal people had emotions and forgetting that this wasn’t just a war game, that combining the Feds and News wasn’t going to be half as easy as the Reds and Blues. Wash using his knife, once again getting close enough to use his knife. But he was okay, Wash was always okay. Even with blood on his face and his eyes not quite focusing, Wash was always okay. Afterwards, with fireworks like diamonds in the sky, with messages unheard and the children to take care of, Wash almost seemed normal. With Kimball grateful and everyone just wanting to rest.

The moon, though.

The moon.

It was … safe there and Carolina hardly knew what to do, with nobody trying to kill her family. With Grif teaching her how to relax and singing in a garage band. They reveled in not being shot at, in not having to spend every waking and sleeping moment in armor. Simmons became horribly sunburned. Caboose couldn’t recognize anyone for days. Tucker was shorter than anyone ever realized, shorter even than York had been, and Carolina teased him mercilessly when he needed help reaching down the cereal. Caboose braided flowers in Carolina’s hair, like he had done for his sisters long ago, and then in Tucker’s hair and Grif’s -the only other people whose hair was long enough- and then made crowns for everyone else of yellow petals and feathery grasses.

They weren’t bored on the moon, not in the way she’d feared. Not in any way she’d feared. There was a decade of shitty television to catch up on, and band practice that was mostly arguing about the name. There was relaxing and dinosaur fights and burying Donut’s armor when he went skinny dipping. Tucker and Grif argued about the band name some more. Sarge picked new fights, so many new fights, and tried to teach them all to knit. That entertained everyone for two entire weeks while Tucker insisted the yarn should be held in one hand, Sarge insisted the other, and Donut tried to convince everyone to try crocheting instead. Then Caboose disappeared and they had to rescue him, for reasons. They formed a new government, or at least agreed to rule by malarky and whatever amused them the most.

Wash grew a beard. He’d never done it before, and he did it now, just to see what it would be like. It looked ridiculous and Carolina kissed him one night, after enough beer to blame and not enough to not know what she was doing. His beard was soft as a kitten’s ear against her face, and she held his face in her hands and kissed him. They weren’t wearing armor, and she could feel the heat of his blood through the thin cotton of his shirt, and he gave way to her sweetly, so sweetly. Wash tasted like sweat and kevlar and something indefinably _David_ and his hands in her hair were gentle, so gentle.

“What are we doing?” he asked the next morning.

“Whatever we want,” she replied, and it was better than the sex, lying next to him without armor, safe and warm in his narrow bed, with the sun slanting through the blind and painting tiger stripes on his beard. The blanket was blue of course, because blue base, but the room was no longer the spare utilitarian space he had on Chorus. There were some interesting rocks on the shelf, one of which looked an awful lot like a rubber duck, and ancient cat memes taped to the walls in places. There was a whole box of yarn from where Sarge was trying to teach him to knit socks like real soldiers did and the glass of water next to the bed had a curly straw in it. He still hoarded food, though Carolina couldn’t blame him, between Caboose and Grif, and there was a towel hanging from the closet doorknob, stained red from when he’d helped her dye her hair almost the color of his beard. 

She thought of that often, the way his beard was red even though his hair was blond with dark roots. Red-gold like an old penny, not red like blood, like Carolina’s hair. There was no war in his beard. He was at peace. She liked the beard for its symbolism alone, and its softness, and tried to not make _too_ many comments.

And then he shaved it off, thank God. It was itchy, he said, and she didn’t say anything. It was his face and his skin. His blood, too, when he nicked himself and it ran down his neck. She’d sat him on the toilet and made him look up at the ceiling, and she’d dabbed neosporin on his neck and felt his breath catch in his throat under her thumb.

It was the first time she had seen his blood in six months or more. Certainly the first time since Chorus, and she wondered if he thought it was strange to not have healing scabs tender on his knees, to be sweating nowhere under bandages, to have no stitches to keep dry. 

The sink looked like he had shaved a small dog. He’d never grown a beard before, never shaved a beard before, and they did not know to shave that much hair off over a wastebasket instead of a naked drain.

Carolina laughed at the way it overflowed,laughed harder at Wash’s panic. He never panicked over anything actually dangerous, and she giggled without guilt as he tried to take the sink apart, tried pouring acid and god alone knew what down the drain. In the end they had to ask for help, and it turned out the only person who knew anything about plumbing was Sarge. Which was more surprising than it should have been, and Sarge insisted on turning it into an impromptu lesson for everyone who could cram inside the bathroom.

There had been whiskey to celebrate the unclogging that night, from Chorus before the war. Whiskey and talk, and whiskey-fueled plans. And then they made a waterpark. Or, Sarge and the rest made a waterpark, while Wash and Carolina watched bemusedly.

Wash went down to help them calculate angles for the waterslide at one point. Carolina watched him, wearing no armor and gesticulating with a datapad, and there was a half-healed scab on his neck and a smile on his face. Carolina thought that smile was worth a lot. Wash was okay, that smile proved. They had been through hell and high water, through fire and ice, and Wash was okay at the end.

Had her mother ever looked at her father with such silent affection, soft as Wash’s beard had been and secret as a prayer? Had her mother felt the same, lying in bed next to her husband, the father of her child, where everything was quiet and still, had her whole world, if not her past, seemed to fit seamlessly, wife mother sister friend soldier all locked together without overlap, without having to choose?

Carolina had to choose. Not in front of the water park but later, much later, half-dead and Wash talking about muppets and Tucker panicking and Caboose upset and who knew what was going on with the Reds anyways. Carolina had no time for anything but the red on Wash’s neck, where he’d nicked himself shaving, and for the way Tucker’s hands didn’t tremble.

Carolina had to choose and she didn’t say anything when Locus took Wash away, because Wash was always okay and she wasn’t done yet. She needed to bring them home safe to Wash, Tucker and Caboose in one piece. She needed to find Temple and get an explanation for that goddamn murder fridge, who he thought he was, who he thought she was that she would recognize him.

She needed to make sure he paid for his crimes, and she needed to make sure Tucker didn’t do anything he’d regret later. Tucker was their problem child, and Carolina would return him to Wash with minimal psychological scarring if she could.

And there was the saving of Earth and the UNSC headquarters. That was somewhat important.

There was so much bullshit after but Carolina let Tucker handle it, reminded Sarge that he was a Colonel and thus it was his duty to handle it. Tucker was good, cared about it in ways wholly alien to Carolina, and she was glad he seemed satisfied with what happened. She’d bring him home to Wash and there would be no more worrying about him until the next time Tucker fucked up and they had to explain it wasn’t the end of the world. Caboose was quiet next to her, and she let him hold her hand while he thought, about what she did not know. Wash would talk to him about it, Wash had a way with Caboose’s disturbingly fragile heart. Until then, Carolina would guard him. She wasn’t in charge anymore. Tucker was now, and it had happened so easily they never needed to speak of it. He had grown, on Chorus, into a leader of men even though he claimed to hate it. He probably did. But there had been nobody else, with Carolina and Wash and Sarge gone, so he had stepped up and done what he had to. And when it was over, they never stopped looking at him.

It was nice, to not have to deal with the paperwork, to only have to worry about Caboose. To follow orders and trust her leader. Carolina never realized how much she hated being responsible for who lived and died until it was no longer thrown on her for being the best. She could beat Tucker nine and a half times out of ten, but Tucker was the one they’d follow to hell and back. Hopefully not literally, though the way their luck ran, they probably _would_ end up doing that one day. She’d have to remember that to tell Wash later. Was there armor rated for lava-diving?

Across the hall, Red Team did their Red Team thing, which was equal parts bickering and, well, more bickering. Carolina had heard that Simmons won a knife fight, and she hoped someone had a recording of it to show Wash. Wash had trained Simmons on the moon, hoped Simmons never had to actually fight in earnest, because according to Wash Simmons was the worst person he’d ever fought. Of all time. It seemed like Wash had just fought very skilled people, or Simmons got lucky, because Simmons was still alive and didn’t have any knives sticking out of him.

And Grif came back, which Wash had thought he would. But that was for later; whatever their understanding now, Grif and Carolina both had other things to take care of. She could wait for him; other people needed him more. After all, soon enough she’d be back with Wash, who knew how she felt, whom she knew how he felt. Something Grif didn’t have. Carolina made a mental note to talk to Grif later, or at least stand awkwardly there until he understood. She liked having him around. She’d respect his choices. They were always going to come back.

Soon enough, soon enough. They’d earned some peace after this, and Carolina looked forward to taking her armor off once again, to feeling the sun on her shoulders and seeing Wash’s face properly. It wouldn’t last, it never did. But they could grab what they had while they had it, and perhaps one day this too would be pleasant to remember.

The ride home was quiet. Grif and Simmons used a private channel for once in their fucking lives, Tucker and Caboose leaned against each other back to back, Caboose’s head tipped back uncomfortably far to rest on top of Tucker’s helmet. But they were safe, and alive, and the rest would come with time. Carolina just wanted to get home and when did that word start meaning Wash?

It would be good to see him, after such a long round-trip. He should be recovered enough to eat, to talk, maybe even enough to leave if he promised to check in frequently. Maybe they could get a little room somewhere, the two of them, have an actual vacation away from the rest of the gang. The kind of vacation where they ordered room service and never actually left the hotel.

Carolina shook her head, unnoticed by anyone else. Of course that was impossible. They couldn’t abandon Tucker to the chaos like that. No, they’d probably need an entire floor of a hotel. Blues at the north end, reds at the south, as defined by sunrise and sunset rather than magnetic fields. That’s how it went, that’s how it always went, and maybe would for the next twenty years.

Dr. Grey found her in the hospital, looking for Wash. It was still busy, with the rebuilding of Chorus and all the unskilled construction workers trying to operate heavy machinery. With the people who had put off what they could until the time the war was over. So busy Carolina didn’t bother to ask where he was. The line for the front desk was so long, it would have been quicker to do a room by room search. Perhaps she could have jumped the queue, but...that didn’t seem quite right. She knew Wash was okay. Wash was always okay. People in that line didn’t have the luxury of that knowledge.

“Carolina,” Dr. Grey said softly, a trace of a giggle in her voice. There always was, and normally Carolina didn’t think anything of it. But she had been through every open ward twice and intensive care three times. She had checked the pediatrics wing in case they stuck him there to play video games and the half-empty cancer floor in case they ran out of room. He had to be in here somewhere, or he would have messaged her to tell her where he was going.

And Dr. Grey was holding his helmet in her hands, still stained red in places.

“Where is he.” Carolina bit the words off, thought of her father leaning in and making the rookie, in full power armor, flinch. “Where is Wash?”

The doctor flinched too. “Kimball’s office,” she said, turning Wash’s helmet over in her hands. “We couldn’t wait any longer. We don’t exactly have a lot of morticians left and, well. Decisions had to be made.”

“What do you mean, decisions,” Carolina growled. “What do you mean, morticians?”

Dr. Grey looked at Wash’s helmet, still spattered with red in places. “I’m sorry,” she said, and it was the least chipper Carolina had ever heard her, and she’d appreciate that later. “By the time he got here, it was too late.” She thrust the helmet into Carolina’s hands. “He had been without oxygen too long. We restored blood flow, but his neural oscillations…”

“I don’t give a damn about his oscillations!” Carolina wanted to throw the helmet but clutched it to her chest, her hands understanding Grey’s words even as her head refused to. “Where is Wash?”

“He’s dead,” Dr. Grey covered Carolina’s hands with her own, and the laugh she choked back had a trace of the hysterical. “And none of you were here to ask anything. So we had to decide, and Kimball decided to keep his ashes in her office until you came and told us what to do with them. We don’t really have a graveyard here.”

The world tilted sideways under her feet, and Carolina had to throw her hand to the wall to keep from falling down. “No,” she whispered, screamed but this was so big to swallow, only the barest murmur escaped and her bones turned to jelly and only her armor kept her on her feet.

“Luckily, none of his organs were viable!” Dr Grey chirped and oh, Carolina could hate her for that. “He went without respiration or electrical activity or even blood flow for almost thirty-six hours, you know.”

“How,” Carolina gasped, her father’s accent rolling off her tongue. She didn’t want to think about what that implied, not now, not ever. “How is that lucky?”

“Because then we couldn’t make the wrong choice,” Dr. Grey said softly. “Carolina, I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Carolina choked out, and she fled.

Harmonia was empty, still, and she ran until her legs burned and her heart hammered fit to explode behind her ribs. She pressed Wash’s helmet to her chest, where it hurt the most, and ran on. The suit wasn’t designed for sustained speed, but she pushed it anyways, running until her lungs were fire, running until she couldn’t think, couldn’t remember, couldn’t take another step, until she collapsed where she stood.

This wasn’t the first time she ran from grief and failed. But this time, there was nobody to follow her, nobody to wipe her face and carry her home. No-one to kneel in front of her and hold her. This time, she was alone in her grief, this time there wasn’t even the comfort of hating someone else for refusing to support her properly.

She was no longer a child, and such dramatics were no longer necessary to understand her own loss. Carolina pushed herself up wearily, sat on the bench next to the glowing algae, Wash’s helmet still clutched in her hands. She knew better than to bargain or plead or rage. None of that would work. Nothing, nothing would change things.

David was dead.

And a bad death, if any could be called good. Shot while delirious, taken away from his friends, dying alone and uncomforted while his friends punched a tank to death. Had he known what was happening? Had he been afraid? Brought back to a mockery of life, and let go again. Like her mother, so much like her mother.

She was the last of Project Freelancer now, and she felt terribly, terribly alone. Worse than when she’d gone over the cliff, because then at least the others were still out there somewhere. Worse than after she’d left that bunker, because Wash had been waiting for her and he didn’t ask about the pistol. And she hadn’t gone in alone, she hadn’t come out alone. Wash had waited, patiently, for Carolina to work her way towards him. And in some ways, that was regret deep as the ocean, monsters in the depths she did not care to look upon.

And in some ways, it had been a blessing. Wash had taken the worst of her for so long, but she was able to give him the best of her, without hesitation, without reservation. It had been good, on the moon. Brief but good.

That wasn’t enough, was crueler for how good it had been, how brief it had been. Tears slipped heedlessly down her face. Nothing about it was fair, nothing about it was right, nothing about it was what they deserved. It hurt, worse than knife or bullet or the empty seat in the audience. It was ice in her veins, freezing her from the inside out, overwhelming her, drowning her, and she scrabbled for something to hold onto, and she threw Wash’s helmet as hard as she could, as if he could catch it and put it back on with a melodramatic one-liner.

The helmet bounced off some unevenness in the ground and rolled back to her feet, empty and cold and blank. Wash’s face, with everything she once loved gone. It was the only thing left of him, not even ten seconds of security footage, not even an undeleted voicemail. And she’d not said goodbye to him. Lord, how she regretted that now. Even if she hadn’t, even if she just had some way to watch him. Surely, someone had made a home movie. Did Jensen still have the training videos? No, that had been before Tucker had gone to find Wash. 

She understood, now, why she’d found the Director in front of that video, why her father had never shown it to her. Carolina had spoken so mockingly to him, and now she would give anything, anything to have one of Wash, to have said goodbye properly. To not have her last memory of him be the blood under her hands, him mumbling about things nobody else could see. How was she supposed to tell the others? How was she supposed to face Caboose, who’d just lost Church for the latest and last time, Tucker who’d believed so hard, that all he had to do was put Temple in jail where he belonged and then he could come home and tease Wash? How was she supposed to tell Grif, who’d come to save them, that he had failed and Wash had died?

How had her father told her that her mother wasn’t coming home? That was the closest she had come to this, and she’d never thought to find something worse. But this was, this was a thousand times worse. They were old enough to understand what it meant. She was the one carrying the news. There would be no flag for anyone to offer on bent knee, no comforting rituals of mourning someone lost in war. They hadn’t helped Carolina, young and confused, and they hadn’t helped her father. But they might have helped the rest of them, the overgrown children that were now solely her responsibility. Already, she wished they were gone, wished they would not complicated her grief.

Carolina stood up, wiped her face with the back of her wrist. Put her helmet on, and picked up Wash’s helmet, grey and yellow in her hands, bloodstained and heavy. However long she had sat there was long enough for her legs to forgive her the long run, and she stood up very straight. She headed back to the center of town, to what was left of their family. They loved Wash too, she needed to remember. She would not repeat her father’s errors.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
